Art AIDS America ran from December 1, 2016 (World AIDS Day) through April 2, 2017, at the Alphawood Gallery in Chicago. We wish to express our deep gratitude to the thousands of people who visited this remarkable exhibition, as well as the many people and institutions that helped make it possible. Please explore our Exhibition website, which is preserved here. Among many other resources, the website contains video documentation of some of the extraordinary programs that took place over the course of the exhibition.

A catalogue of the Chicago version of Art AIDS America will be published later in 2018. This will be a companion volume to the original catalogue published by Tacoma Art Museum and the University of Washington Press, and will highlight the additional works added for the Chicago presentation as well as the extensive programming organized by Alphawood Gallery during the exhibition.

Event Videos

On this page you will find recordings from some of the events that happened at Art AIDS America Chicago.

Salonathon: Call Forth the Future (2 APR 2017)

This special edition of Salonathon is an evening of performances that respond to the groundbreaking exhibition Art AIDS America Chicago, and lean purposefully toward the future.

“The thought of being a creator, of engendering, of shaping” is nothing without its continuous great confirmation and embodiment in the world, nothing without the thousand-fold assent from Things and animals – and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation. And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable. And they call forth the future… (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet)

Salonathon is an engine for experimental work, an inclusive creative community, and a great party.It manifests every Monday night at Beauty Bar as a performance series, and also in the form of residencies, retreats and partnerships beyond. Since 2011, Salonathon has hosted thousands of performances and artists, and has nurtured the development of dozens of new projects and collaborations. Salonathon is a home for underground, emerging and genre-defying art!

As we look to the future we reflect on the many lessons that shifted the political paradigm and galvanized a polarized nation toward action. In our final panel Art AIDS America Chicago investigates these collective strategies in discussion with artistic, educational, and activist leaders featuring Rae Lewis-Thornton (Emmy Award: Hard News, Living With AIDS ), Ricardo Jiménez (Vida/SIDA), Graunk Enzenberger (Pink Angels), Maxx Boykin (AIDS Foundation of Chicago), and Oli Rodriguez (The Papi Project) moderated by University of Illinois-Chicago Gender and Women’s Studies Director and In Plain Sight: A Women’s History of HIV/AIDS in Chicago Project Director, Jennie Brier.

Viral Representation: On AIDS and Art (10-11 MAR 2017)

Viral Representation: On AIDS and Art, held in conjunction with the exhibition Art AIDS America at the Alphawood Gallery, brings together scholars, artists, collectors, and curators to address how artists have responded to, and reflected on, AIDS in America.

Art AIDS America Chicago Panel – Love Positive Women: HIV & Women featuring performance by Felicia Holman and Meida McNeal of Honey Pot Performance (22 FEB 2017)
Too often the conversation about HIV/AIDS does not include the impact it has on women or individuals who identify within the feminine spectrum – including transgender, gender non-conforming, and womyn – who represent the highest rates of HIV seroconversion. Beyond health statistics, increased levels of discrimination and criminalization trends have disproportionately affected women of color. This panel discussion brings women to the center of the conversation, providing a critical examination of the causes and effects the impact of HIV/AIDS has on their lives. Panelists include Lesherri James (Affinity Community Services), Jackie Boyd (The Care Plan), Teyanna Veasy (Broadway Youth Center), Marissa Miller (Howard Brown Health), Mary Miller (Chicago Women’s AIDS Project) and will be moderated by Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ Director of Clinical Education and Initiatives, Brenda Wolfe.

Artist Kia Labeija in Conversation with Zach Stafford: Art AIDS America Chicago artist Kia Labeija discusses her artistic practice, which includes photography and voguing, with Zach Stafford, nationally known Chicago-based journalist and editor-at- large for OUT Magazine. Kia Labeija was born with HIV and lost her mother at age 14. She aims for her work to break through a silence that many experience, creating a community and a space to heal.

Art AIDS America Chicago Panel: Embracing Equity (11 JAN 2017)Embracing Equity: A candid conversation led by arts professionals on how to break down the barriers and structures that create a lack of equitable representation in the arts and arts institutions. Panelists include Aymar Jean Christian, founder of Open TV and Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University; Anthony Hirschel, Director of Exhibitions, Alphawood Gallery; Amina Ross, transdisciplinary artist based in Chicago; Kiam Marcelo Junio, visual and performance artist; and Charles Long, Program Coordinator One day this kid will get larger Exhibit. The panel will be moderated by Tracye Matthews, Associate Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture at the University of Chicago.

How AIDS Changed American Art–An Illustrated Lecture by Jonathan Katz with performance by avery r. young (3 DEC 2016)Widely considered merely a tragic tangent within US culture, AIDS has in fact been one of the most powerful shaping forces in American art since the 1980’s. Of course, we have repressed AIDS’ role in the making of our culture in keeping with our longstanding repression of AIDS in general. But repression, as we know from psychoanalysis, is the sign of great power. In this talk, Katz illustrates how AIDS has fundamentally shifted the American cultural landscape, exploring not only the manifold losses AIDS has inflicted, but also how, in response to both AIDS and the prejudice it engendered, a plague has rewritten both the form and content of American art. Delivered by Jonathan Katz, co-curator of Art AIDS America, and Director of Visual Studies Doctoral Program at SUNY. Opening will be a spoken word performance by avery r young. Free and open to the public.

Disruption/Repression: How AIDS Changed America Panel (3 DEC 2016)Medicine, politics, art, activism, sex, culture—everything in the US changed after the first reports of a mysterious illness in 1981. In the face of intense fear, repression, and prejudice, brave activists took to the streets in protest while enduring great loss; their goal was to create change, and ultimately, find compassion for the suffering and departed. This panel of an ACT-UP Chicago founder, artists, activists, scholars, and medical and museum professionals will discuss the response to HIV/AIDS at the height of the crisis, how it relates to today, and how it informs their work. The panel will feature Dr. Renslow Sherer, Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago; Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, artist and member of Gran Fury; Peter Carpenter, Independent Choreographer and Associate Professor at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago; Mary Patten founding member of ACT UP Chicago and Professor in the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Jeanne Kracher, Executive Director Crossroads Fund; and Stephanie Stebich, Executive Director, Tacoma Art Museum. The panel will be moderated by Lora Branch, long-time Public Health Advocate.

Art AIDS America was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts. The exhibition is co-curated by Jonathan David Katz, Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program at the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), and Rock Hushka, Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art at Tacoma Art Museum. The national tour is supported by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art and Gilead Sciences, Inc. The exhibition and catalogue have been made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

In Chicago, this exhibition is made possible by the Alphawood Foundation, a Chicago-based, grant-making private foundation working for an equitable, just and humane society. The exhibition will be presented in a new temporary space, the Alphawood Gallery, renovated for this purpose, located in the Foundation’s headquarters building.